19: Part 2: Chapter IX

A lonely ship sailed up the St. Lawrence. The white whales floundering
in the Bay of Tadoussac, and the wild duck diving as the foaming prow
drew near,—there was no life but these in all that watery solitude,
twenty miles from shore to shore. The ship was from Honfleur, and was
commanded by Samuel de Champlain. He was the AEneas of a destined
people, and in her womb lay the embryo life of Canada.

De Monts, after his exclusive privilege of trade was revoked and his
Acadian enterprise ruined, had, as we have seen, abandoned it to
Poutrincourt. Perhaps would it have been well for him had he abandoned
with it all Transatlantic enterprises; but the passion for discovery and
the noble ambition of founding colonies had taken possession of his
mind. These, rather than a mere hope of gain, seem to have been his
controlling motives; yet the profits of the fur-trade were vital to the
new designs he was meditating, to meet the heavy outlay they demanded,
and he solicited and obtained a fresh monopoly of the traffic for one
year.

Champlain was, at the time, in Paris; but his unquiet thoughts turned
westward. He was enamoured of the New World, whose rugged charms had
seized his fancy and his heart; and as explorers of Arctic seas have
pined in their repose for polar ice and snow, so did his restless
thoughts revert to the fog-wrapped coasts, the piny odors of forests,
the noise of waters, the sharp and piercing sunlight, so dear to his
remembrance. He longed to unveil the mystery of that boundless
wilderness, and plant the Catholic faith and the power of France amid
its ancient barbarism.

Five years before, he had explored the St. Lawrence as far as the rapids
above Montreal. On its banks, as he thought, was the true site for a
settlement,—a fortified post, whence, as from a secure basis, the
waters of the vast interior might be traced back towards their sources,
and a western route discovered to China and Japan. For the fur-trade,
too, the innumerable streams that descended to the great river might all
be closed against foreign intrusion by a single fort at some commanding
point, and made tributary to a rich and permanent commerce; while—and
this was nearer to his heart, for he had often been heard to say that
the saving of a soul was worth more than the conquest of an empire—
countless savage tribes, in the bondage of Satan, might by the same
avenues be reached and redeemed.

De Monts embraced his views; and, fitting out two ships, gave command of
one to the elder Pontgrave, of the other to Champlain. The former was to
trade with the Indians and bring back the cargo of furs which, it was
hoped, would meet the expense of the voyage. To Champlain fell the
harder task of settlement and exploration.

Pontgrave, laden with goods for the Indian trade of Tadoussac sailed
from Honfleur on the fifth of April, 1608. Champlain, with men, arms,
and stores for the colony, followed, eight days later. On the fifteenth
of May he was on the Grand Bank; on the thirtieth he passed Gaspe, and
on the third of June neared Tadoussac. No living thing was to be seen.
He anchored, lowered a boat, and rowed into the port, round the rocky
point at the southeast, then, from the fury of its winds and currents,
called La Pointe de Tous les Diables. There was life enough within, and
more than he cared to find. In the still anchorage under the cliffs lay
Pontgrave's vessel, and at her side another ship, which proved to be a
Basque furtrader.

Poutgrave, arriving a few days before, had found himself anticipated by
the Basques, who were busied in a brisk trade with bands of Indians
cabined along the borders of the cove. He displayed the royal letters,
and commanded a cessation of the prohibited traffic; but the Basques
proved refractory, declared that they would trade in spite of the King,
fired on Pontgrave with cannon and musketry, wounded him and two of his
men, and killed a third. They then boarded his vessel, and carried away
all his cannon, small arms, and ammunition, saying that they would
restore them when they had finished their trade and were ready to return
home.

Champlain found his comrade on shore, in a disabled condition. The
Basques, though still strong enough to make fight, were alarmed for the
consequences of their conduct, and anxious to come to terms. A peace,
therefore, was signed on board their vessel; all differences were
referred to the judgment of the French courts, harmony was restored, and
the choleric strangers betook themselves to catching whales.

This port of Tadoussac was long the centre of the Canadian fur-trade. A
desolation of barren mountains closes round it, betwixt whose ribs of
rugged granite, bristling with savins, birches, and firs, the Saguenay
rolls its gloomy waters from the northern wilderness. Centuries of
civilization have not tamed the wildness of the place; and still, in
grim repose, the mountains hold their guard around the waveless lake
that glistens in their shadow, and doubles, in its sullen mirror, crag,
precipice, and forest.

Near the brink of the cove or harbor where the vessels lay, and a little
below the mouth of a brook which formed one of the outlets of this small
lake, stood the remains of the wooden barrack built by Chauvin eight
years before. Above the brook were the lodges of an Indian camp,—
stacks of poles covered with birch-bark. They belonged to an Algonquin
horde, called Montagnais, denizens of surrounding wilds, and gatherers
of their only harvest,—skins of the moose, caribou, and bear; fur of
the beaver, marten, otter, fox, wild-cat, and lynx. Nor was this all,
for there were intermediate traders betwixt the French and the shivering
bands who roamed the weary stretch of stunted forest between the
head-waters of the Saguenay and Hudson's Bay. Indefatigable canoe-men,
in their birchen vessels, light as eggshells, they threaded the devious
tracks of countless rippling streams, shady by-ways of the forest, where
the wild duck scarcely finds depth to swim; then descended to their mart
along those scenes of picturesque yet dreary grandeur which steam has
made familiar to modern tourists. With slowly moving paddles they glided
beneath the cliff whose shaggy brows frown across the zenith, and whose
base the deep waves wash with a hoarse and hollow cadence; and they
passed the sepulchral Bay of the Trinity, dark as the tide of Acheron,—
a sanctuary of solitude and silence: depths which, as the fable runs, no
sounding line can fathom, and heights at whose dizzy verge the wheeling
eagle seems a speck.

Peace being established with the Basques, and the wounded Pontgrave
busied, as far as might be, in transferring to the hold of his ship the
rich lading of the Indian canoes, Champlain spread his sails, and again
held his course up the St. Lawrence. Far to the south, in sun and
shadow, slumbered the woody mountains whence fell the countless springs
of the St. John, behind tenantless shores, now white with glimmering
villages,—La Chenaic, Granville, Kamouraska, St. Roche, St. Jean,
Vincelot, Berthier. But on the north the jealous wilderness still
asserts its sway, crowding to the river's verge its walls, domes, and
towers of granite; and, to this hour, its solitude is scarcely broken.

Above the point of the Island of Orleans, a constriction of the vast
channel narrows it to less than a mile, with the green heights of Point
Levi on one side, and on the other the cliffs of Quebec. Here, a small
stream, the St. Charles, enters the St. Lawrence, and in the angle
betwixt them rises the promontory on two sides a natural fortress.
Between the cliffs and the river lay a strand covered with walnuts and
other trees. From this strand, by a rough passage gullied downward from
the place where Prescott Gate now guards the way, one might climb the
height to the broken plateau above, now burdened with its ponderous load
of churches, convents, dwellings, ramparts, and batteries. Thence, by a
gradual ascent, the rock sloped upward to its highest summit, Cape
Diamond, looking down on the St. Lawrence from a height of three hundred
and fifty feet. Here the citadel now stands; then the fierce sun fell on
the bald, baking rock, with its crisped mosses and parched lichens. Two
centuries and a half have quickened the solitude with swarming life,
covered the deep bosom of the river with barge and steamer and gliding
sail, and reared cities and villages on the site of forests; but nothing
can destroy the surpassing grandeur of the scene.

On the strand between the water and the cliffs Champlain's axemen fell
to their work. They were pioneers of an advancing host,—advancing, it
is true, with feeble and uncertain progress,—priests, soldiers,
peasants, feudal scutcheons, royal insignia: not the Middle Age, but
engendered of it by the stronger life of modern centralization, sharply
stamped with a parental likeness, heir to parental weakness and parental
force.

In a few weeks a pile of wooden buildings rose on the brink of the St.
Lawrence, on or near the site of the marketplace of the Lower Town of
Quebec. The pencil of Champlain, always regardless of proportion and
perspective, has preserved its likeness. A strong wooden wall,
surmounted by a gallery loop-holed for musketry, enclosed three
buildings, containing quarters for himself and his men, together with a
courtyard, from one side of which rose a tall dove-cot, like a belfry. A
moat surrounded the whole, and two or three small cannon were planted on
salient platforms towards the river. There was a large storehouse near
at hand, and a part of the adjacent ground was laid out as a garden.

In this garden Champlain was one morning directing his laborers, when
Tetu, his pilot, approached him with an anxious countenance, and
muttered a request to speak with him in private. Champlain assenting,
they withdrew to the neighboring woods, when the pilot disburdened
himself of his secret. One Antoine Natel, a locksmith, smitten by
conscience or fear, had revealed to him a conspiracy to murder his
commander and deliver Quebec into the hands of the Basques and Spaniards
then at Tadoussac. Another locksmith, named Duval, was author of the
plot, and, with the aid of three accomplices, had befooled or frightened
nearly all the company into taking part in it. Each was assured that he
should make his fortune, and all were mutually pledged to poniard the
first betrayer of the secret. The critical point of their enterprise was
the killing of Champlain. Some were for strangling him, some for raising
a false alarm in the night and shooting him as he came out from his
quarters.

Having heard the pilot's story, Champlain, remaining in the woods,
desired his informant to find Antoine Natel, and bring him to the spot.
Natel soon appeared, trembling with excitement and fear, and a close
examination left no doubt of the truth of his statement. A small vessel,
built by Pontgrave at Tadoussac, had lately arrived, and orders were now
given that it should anchor close at hand. On board was a young man in
whom confidence could be placed. Champlain sent him two bottles of wine,
with a direction to tell the four ringleaders that they had been given
him by his Basque friends at Tadoussac, and to invite them to share the
good cheer. They came aboard in the evening, and were seized and
secured. "Voyla done mes galants bien estonnez," writes Champlain.

It was ten o'clock, and most of the men on shore were asleep. They were
wakened suddenly, and told of the discovery of the plot and the arrest
of the ringleaders. Pardon was then promised them, and they were
dismissed again to their beds, greatly relieved; for they had lived in
trepidation, each fearing the other. Duval's body, swinging from a
gibbet, gave wholesome warning to those he had seduced; and his head was
displayed on a pike, from the highest roof of the buildings, food for
birds and a lesson to sedition. His three accomplices were carried by
Pontgrave to France, where they made their atonement in the galleys.

It was on the eighteenth of September that Pontgrave set sail, leaving
Champlain with twenty-eight men to hold Quebec through the winter. Three
weeks later, and shores and hills glowed with gay prognostics of
approaching desolation,—the yellow and scarlet of the maples, the deep
purple of the ash, the garnet hue of young oaks, the crimson of the
tupelo at the water's edge, and the golden plumage of birch saplings in
the fissures of the cliff. It was a short-lived beauty. The forest
dropped its festal robes. Shrivelled and faded, they rustled to the
earth. The crystal air and laughing sun of October passed away, and
November sank upon the shivering waste, chill and sombre as the tomb.

A roving band of Montagnais had built their huts near the buildings, and
were busying themselves with their autumn eel-fishery, on which they
greatly relied to sustain their miserable lives through the winter.
Their slimy harvest being gathered, and duly smoked and dried, they gave
it for safe-keeping to Champlain, and set out to hunt beavers. It was
deep in the winter before they came back, reclaimed their eels, built
their birch cabins again, and disposed themselves for a life of ease,
until famine or their enemies should put an end to their enjoyments.
These were by no means without alloy. While, gorged with food, they lay
dozing on piles of branches in their smoky huts, where, through the
crevices of the thin birch bark, streamed in a cold capable at times of
congealing mercury, their slumbers were beset with nightmare visions of
Iroquois forays, scalpings, butcherings, and burnings. As dreams were
their oracles, the camp was wild with fright. They sent out no scouts
and placed no guard; but, with each repetition of these nocturnal
terrors, they came flocking in a body to beg admission within the fort.
The women and children were allowed to enter the yard and remain during
the night, while anxious fathers and jealous husbands shivered in the
darkness without.

On one occasion, a group of wretched beings was seen on the farther bank
of the St. Lawrence, like wild animals driven by famine to the borders
of the settler's clearing. The river was full of drifting ice, and there
was no crossing without risk of life. The Indians, in their desperation,
made the attempt; and midway their canoes were ground to atoms among the
tossing masses. Agile as wild-cats, they all leaped upon a huge raft of
ice, the squaws carrying their children on their shoulders, a feat at
which Champlain marveled when he saw their starved and emaciated
condition. Here they began a wail of despair; when happily the pressure
of other masses thrust the sheet of ice against the northern shore. They
landed and soon made their appearance at the fort, worn to skeletons and
horrible to look upon. The French gave them food, which they devoured
with a frenzied avidity, and, unappeased, fell upon a dead dog left on
the snow by Champlain for two months past as a bait for foxes. They
broke this carrion into fragments, and thawed and devoured it, to the
disgust of the spectators, who tried vainly to prevent them.

This was but a severe access of the periodical famine which, during
winter, was a normal condition of the Algonquin tribes of Acadia and the
Lower St. Lawrence, who, unlike the cognate tribes of New England, never
tilled the soil, or made any reasonable provision against the time of
need.

One would gladly know how the founders of Quebec spent the long hours of
their first winter; but on this point the only man among them, perhaps,
who could write, has not thought it necessary to enlarge. He himself
beguiled his leisure with trapping foxes, or hanging a dead dog from a
tree and watching the hungry martens in their efforts to reach it.
Towards the close of winter, all found abundant employment in nursing
themselves or their neighbors, for the inevitable scurvy broke out with
virulence. At the middle of May, only eight men of the twenty-eight were
alive, and of these half were suffering from disease.

This wintry purgatory wore away; the icy stalactites that hung from the
cliffs fell crashing to the earth; the clamor of the wild geese was
heard; the bluebirds appeared in the naked woods; the water-willows were
covered with their soft caterpillar-like blossoms; the twigs of the
swamp maple were flushed with ruddy bloom; the ash hung out its black
tufts; the shad-bush seemed a wreath of snow; the white stars of the
bloodroot gleamed among dank, fallen leaves; and in the young grass of
the wet meadows the marsh-marigolds shone like spots of gold.

Great was the joy of Champlain when, on the fifth of June, he saw a
sailboat rounding the Point of Orleans, betokening that the spring had
brought with it the longed for succors. A son-in-law of Pontgrave, named
Marais, was on board, and he reported that Pontgrave was then at
Tadoussac, where he had lately arrived. Thither Champlain hastened, to
take counsel with his comrade. His constitution or his courage had
defied the scurvy. They met, and it was determined betwixt them, that,
while Pontgrave remained in charge of Quebec, Champlain should enter at
once on his long meditated explorations, by which, like La Salle seventy
years later, he had good hope of finding a way to China.

But there was a lion in the path. The Indian tribes, to whom peace was
unknown, infested with their scalping parties the streams and pathways
of the forest, and increased tenfold its inseparable risks. The after
career of Champlain gives abundant proof that he was more than
indifferent to all such chances; yet now an expedient for evading them
offered itself, so consonant with his instincts that he was glad to
accept it.

During the last autumn, a young chief from the banks of the then unknown
Ottawa had been at Quebec; and, amazed at what he saw, he had begged
Champlain to join him in the spring against his enemies. These enemies
were a formidable race of savages,—the Iroquois, or Five Confederate
Nations, who dwelt in fortified villages within limits now embraced by
the State of New York, and who were a terror to all the surrounding
forests. They were deadly foes of their kindred the Hurons, who dwelt on
the lake which bears their name, and were allies of Algonquin bands on
the Ottawa. All alike were tillers of the soil, living at ease when
compared with the famished Algonquins of the Lower St. Lawrence.

By joining these Hurons and Algonquins against their Iroquois enemies,
Champlain might make himself the indispensable ally and leader of the
tribes of Canada, and at the same time fight his way to discovery in
regions which otherwise were barred against him. From first to last it
was the policy of France in America to mingle in Indian politics, hold
the balance of power between adverse tribes, and envelop in the network
of her power and diplomacy the remotest hordes of the wilderness. Of
this policy the Father of New France may perhaps be held to have set a
rash and premature example. Yet while he was apparently following the
dictates of his own adventurous spirit, it became evident, a few years
later, that under his thirst for discovery and spirit of knight-errantry
lay a consistent and deliberate purpose. That it had already assumed a
definite shape is not likely; but his after course makes it plain that,
in embroiling himself and his colony with the most formidable savages on
the continent, he was by no means acting so recklessly as at first sight
would appear.